The “controversial theology’’ of the relationship between the church and secular authority, was honed to a fine edge by decades of confrontation between Jesuits, notably Gregorio de Valentia, Robert Bellarmine and later Francois Verron, and the ‘‘heretics of our time.’’ In outline, the Jesuit (and Tridentine) argument was that: the complementarity of reason and revelation entailed that to be a real body, the ‘‘church militant,’’ the collectivity of all living Christians, must have the same properties as any other body, corporation or order. It must be not only entirely ‘‘visible’’ (contrary to the Reformers), but it must also have a supreme ‘‘arbiter of disputes’’ concerning faith and morals. Christ cannot have left the church destitute of the means necessary to ensure the salvation of Christians. The failure of the heretics to agree even on essentials was due entirely to their rejection of the headship of Rome, attempting to establish a text in its place (sola scriptura). However, no text can interpret itself, there was a church before the Scriptures were written, and the scriptural canon (that is, what was authentically part of the Scriptures) was determined by the church and not vice versa. The church is, therefore, itself in every sense a “commonwealth,” the respublica Christiana, requiring a visible head with supreme authority, summa (or plena) potestas, and an order of super - and sub-ordination like any other respublica. A monarchical headship, as well as being naturally the best form, was instituted by Christ and conferred on the successors of St Peter, the Vicar of Rome. The role of general councils here remained ambiguous, although the Councils of Constance and Trent had been critical for the church’s reformation and restoration. All the same, general councils could only be rare events, and for most purposes the papacy was the supreme head and arbiter of controversies.
Jesuits argued that the potestas indirecta was a “mediating” position between denying the papacy any authority in temporal matters, and assigning it supreme authority as princeps mundi, with secular rulers as its ministers. The latter idea was laughable, and arguably heretical (even though medieval hierocrats, including popes, had maintained it), in that it made rightful political authority dependent on grace or faith, whereas it depends on nature and (in some sense) consent, and exists among pagans, heretics, and schismatics. The potestas indirecta, so Jesuits argued, preserved the rightful independence of secular rulers in secular matters, while acknowledging the rightful authority of the church in what concerns the spiritual welfare of Christians. However, because it was the papacy that itself judged whether it should exercise its indirect power, its opponents complained that it conceded authority to secular rulers in form, while denying it in substance.
The argument in any event relied on a distinction between temporal or secular matters (now being called ‘‘matters of state’’), and spiritual or - even more equivocally - ecclesiastical matters that proved unworkable. Venice’s claim to political jurisdiction over clerics and ecclesiastical property (resulting in a papal Interdict of 1606-1607 and the expulsion of the Jesuits from Venice), the censorship of publications (over which the church claimed authority with its various Indexes), the scope of the obedience rulers could legitimately demand of their subjects (the bull Regnans of 1570 excommunicating Elizabeth of England and absolving subjects from their allegiance, the Oath of Allegiance controversy with James I/IV) were all both ‘‘spiritual’’ and ‘‘temporal’’ issues.
World History
